Baby Birds
by Ornithomancy
Summary: She's spiraling, bobbing like a cork, but no one can do anything because that's what she wants and trading pain for nothing is an easy decision.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is my first fic for this amazing season, so I'm just trying to get a feel for the characters and what not. This will most likely be a series of little vignettes, all revolving mostly around Zoe and Madison. I took some liberty in making Miss. R's more like an actual school.**

* * *

The first thing I learned about witchcraft is that it works like almost every other force in this world; nothing is ever free, nothing ever works out as planned, and nothing is ever fair. Bargaining is key and stupidity is always punished. If you exchange shiny hair for a bigger cup size you'd better be prepared to live with some ghastly scalp affliction and triple-D's. If you trade a week's worth of clear skin for an A on your calculus test I'd make extenuating plans for visit to a friendly neighborhood dermatologist and possibly a mask. 'Magic' is exactly how it's portrayed in those ghoulish European children's tales and the genie always grants you exactly what you wish for. This is why we aren't supposed to be using it much off school grounds or without supervision until we're older. Much like other dangerous provisions, Cordelia tells us, witchcraft kills as many young witches as a bottle of scotch kills normal teenagers. The stupid and the unlucky (usually both) always get themselves killed in some dramatic, fire-and-brimstone way and all the girls after them have to hear about it for their whole lives. A young witch's death is often summed up to the public as a freak accident or an unknown medical abnormality but we know the truth. Apparently, eight years ago a girl only semi-able to perform basic necromancy tried to summon her dead grandma and ended up drowning in her own torn viscera- you've gotta give to get. I'm different. I learn our history, practice the safe, predigested spells I'm assigned to practice- no extracurriculars for me. I have no desire to show off. The other girls love to experiment with their ever-evolving skill set. Spell craft sometimes takes a backseat to blossoming teenage sexuality and cruelty. Seduction, while not an official part of school sanctioned curriculum by any means, is like a second language to us girls with the powers of the unnatural. As if anything could really be unnatural- we just have a predisposition to pull it out of its hiding place. A gift. Our shared genetics make us talented in the same way that idiot savants and Olympic athletes are. Our mystic's blood coils from the earliest days into every conceivable type of person. Witches come from every continent, every country, every culture. Witchdoctors, wizards, medicine women, healers, spiritualists, voodoo priestess', the list would spiral to the ground.

* * *

Madison's jaded indifference turned into startling hatred after what happened at the frat party. Zoe could feel it, her low-boil anger, froth that sometimes spit out from under the rattled, cracked lid of a little pot. It settled over everything in their drafty little room like atomic dust. Nan and Cordelia don't understand how the fussy, broken actress worked- Zoe does. She knows better. She doesn't try and help her, it's not what she wants. Madison wants her to listen and wait out her little temper tantrums, her fits over lukewarm showers and light roast coffee that spit on for hours sometimes. They aren't shriek fests: more like murky sulking, daggered glares, bitchy comments sharpened to pinpoint lethal accuracy. It was unpleasant at best, unbearable on the bad days. Queenie started eating in another room and Nan's been avoiding Madison altogether. Zoe had seen her rocking in her chair, upset, grabbing at her ears.

"She keeps counting the bruises. She doesn't remember their faces but she knows where their hands hurt."

* * *

Zoe doesn't get the option to hide out on the porch- Madison doesn't sleep well anymore. It doesn't matter how goddamn early in the morning Zoe wakes up, there will be a weak cigarette ember suspended on the windowsill. It'll move occasionally and flash a face: disheveled hair, sweaty from the dreams; swollen eyes with the remnants of week-old mascara smudged into her eyelids; mouth puckered in her supremely bitchy pout, an effort to contain everything threatening to spill out all at once. She doesn't cry. The scanty little dress from that night (Zoe's, too,) was greasy ash in the dumpster behind the building. She's replaced healthy with an unsettlingly dogmatic obsession with destroying what had happened piece by piece- crisping up the frat boys, obliterating the dresses with their liquor stink and sweat, scouring her skin until bloody pinpricks from her nails stood out against the soap. Nothing was working. The other girls could feel her coming breakdown spidering its way like fissure cracks in pavement.

When they're cleaning dishes in the sink after lunch Madison lifts her arm to put a plate back into its cupboard. Her sleeve slides down.

Zoe sees the cigarette burns, stark and coagulated like lightless stars and dead planets, up and down her inner-arm. Some look fresh, some look weeks old. Madison catches her stare with her thousand-yard eyes.

"Take a picture, bitch, it'll last longer."

They don't discuss this incident with anyone else. She needs space.

* * *

**A/N: This was really short but there is a lot more to come. Aren't you lucky.**


	2. Chapter 2

"Jesus, be more fucking gentle!"

"If you stopped leaning into the needle it wouldn't hurt so goddamn much." Zoe grumbles around a mouthful of hair. She spits it out but it's a losing battle in the bigger war- she'd tried to braid it earlier but this was strenuous work and Madison was no help. Worming the tip of an old sewing needle under the peeling skin of her shoulder was quiet and intimate. Zoe used to do this when she was a kid and had a sunburn peeling- the concept was the same. Madison's peeling as the healthy, not half-dead skin grows back in. They haven't spoken much save for the expletives here and there that are as endearing as anything. She's been so quiet lately, contemplative and reserved, morbid in a way she never was before. Her arms are a star map of suffering, her upper thighs, too (Zoe had to help her shower those first two days). Death has changed her, certainly not for the better. Emptied her out, sewed the floppy skin back into some barely functioning doll girl. She'd looked into the abyss and it had looked back, devoured her whole, spit out a corpse. They'd brought her back to grey rot and loose hair and it's been a hard recovery. Thankfully her memory is still a little spotty, so Zoe's chosen to lie by omission about Spaulding and the trunk. She's sick still, regrowing sloshed viscera and all. She'd had to take the first two days to work the atrophy out of her limbs and her torn Jack-O'-Latern neck now covered at all times by scarf or other accessory. She would sleep up to twelve hours a day, wolf up the contents of the fridge down to condiments as if she hadn't eaten in weeks (she hadn't), take marathon baths that left a black ring in the tub. Vulnerability at this level must be excruciating, so Zoe tries her best. Queenie and Nan help too, but they're not under the obligation of best friends and the implication is that it is her job to handle the hard stuff- showers, peeling skin, the list extends.

* * *

"Look, Nietzsche, I know you are filled with a void and I'm genuinely sorry about it, but if you eat _everything_ in this fucking house I will be tempted to re-kill you." Madison shoots her a look but chooses not to comment. She's swirling around a water glass too-full of whisky and picking at her hands, tired and nauseous. She'd drunk herself into a near stupor last night and spent the early morning sweating on the tile and puking into the toilet while Zoe held her hair back.

"A true friend's work is never done." She'd sing-songed as Madison wretched and heaved, bare shoulder blades bunching like wings or folding fans. It was almost pretty, in a weird way. She'd pulled away from the toilet, greenish and flushed, and laid on the floor in the fetal position. Zoe dragged some blankets off her bed and tucked them around her while she slept the liquor off.

"So, what did we learn last night?"

"That Zoe is shit at holding hair back- I had to wash chunks out this morning. The smell was just what I needed."

"Oh, so the pain junky thing doesn't extend to nausea then?" She rolled her eyes and set her glass down. It was sweating.

"Nope. Not sharp enough. Maybe if I poisoned myself, vomited up some blood and shit." Zoe's at the table with her now, plate containing anything remotely edible left in the kitchen she could find. It's pretty pathetic. Zoe never thought that starving to death would be a valid concern in her life but then again she never thought her pussy would kill her boyfriend, either.

"Let's go out. There's this place that isn't entirely disgusting two blocks over."

"I don't have any money."

"I'll pay, broke bitch."

"Entitled twat."

"Dumb fuck."

There's a smile between them that bounces between words and under their tone and Zoe hopes that just maybe things can be all right, for once.

* * *

The restaurant is nice- outdoor seating which they both prefer because crowds make them crawly and nervous, simple menu, a slightly attractive waiter that gives them both the once-over. Maybe a lifetime ago they would have acted embarrassed, giggled a little, showed some more cleavage, but not now. They dead-eye him and smile politely. Both of them have been fractured by pretty boys and are gluing themselves back together, piece by piece, because they don't need a savior, just help, and doing it together is slow going. Madison gets something she can hardly pronounce with tons of sauce and toppings and a glass of wine that a flash of a fifty-spot prevents her from getting carded for. Zoe is famished but orders something moderately priced because she doesn't entirely trust Madison to not hold it against her in some passive-aggressive way later. The waiter leaves and the smirk on Madison's face is insidious and malicious as boiling clouds on the horizon.

"That waiter wanted to fuck you." Zoe gags a little on her drink, taken back.

"What?"

"You aren't deaf. The waiter, just now? He was practically eating you out with his eyes." She blushes, embarrassed. She hadn't even wanted to think about boys since Kyle, because it could only lead to unresolvable frustration that built up until she was irritated and crabby. She hadn't touched herself since the day she killed Charlie- the darkness between her legs too terrifying and unknowable.

"You're so backed up all a guy would have to do is brush by you and you'd come."

It's times like these where Zoe isn't sure Madison is being entirely honest about the extent of her powers, because there is no fucking way she just _happened_ to say that.

"Madison!" The smirk from before is set at full wattage. Predatory, setting traps.

"Oh, come on, Zoe. You're either getting off in the shower or not at all, and my money is on the former."

"I am _not_ talking about this with you. " She gasps, turning away to play with her fork, her napkin, whatever is farthest away from Madison's amused gaze. She reaches over the table and, quite unexpectedly, puts her hand over Zoe's. It's bony and cold.

"Hey. It's ok. It was the same for me, alright? After those fuckers raped me I pissed blood for two days. Sore everywhere. My pussy didn't stop hurting for like a week after. I couldn't even think about dick without wanting to barf."

"What's your point?" Zoe interjected. She was starting to monologue, perform, and she wanted to hear something real for once.

"My _point_ is that I got over it. No offence, but, getting drugged and gang raped is a teensy bit worse than accidentally killing your boyfriend. And I said 'Fuck them', and I killed them, and I put that shit behind me. But then I died. And you brought me back," This part said with a genuine grin, appreciative and small like the first day. "There isn't anything on the other side, Zoe. Just nothingness, forever. I thought that before and now I know it's true. Nothing really matters, so who gives a fuck?"

"So what, then? Nothing matters? What-A-Cruel-World-Let's-Throw-Ourselves-Into-The-Abyss? That's bullshit. I don't' accept that. Action matters. If there's nothing else than what we do now matters more than anything." Madison shrugged, accepting the point.

"Possibly. Look, I'm not pretending to have any more of an idea than you do. That's just my perspective. Regardless. You need to find your balls and take control. You want to live like a nun your whole life? You're a witch- I'm a witch. We're elite, divine. We don't have to take shit from regular people, Zoe." At this point, the waiter was there with the food. Madison removed her hand and gave him a Hollywood Heights smile, blinding and believable enough to be charming without the wolfish quality she had the tendency to get. He fumbled setting the plates down, dazed. They eat in relative silence.


End file.
